


the difference between

by preromantics



Category: White Collar
Genre: F/M, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-01
Updated: 2010-05-01
Packaged: 2017-10-09 06:00:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/83789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/preromantics/pseuds/preromantics
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Neal leans up between the front seats, dangling the cuffs next to Peter's face. "Sorry," he says, grinning quick, "I couldn't resist."</i> Wherein Neal has a handcuff thing, and also a Peter thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the difference between

Peter has Neal keep the cuffs on until they are around the block in the squad car, peering into the mirrors to make sure they aren't being followed.

"Alright, we can get those off now," Peter says, turning back towards Neal when they are a safe distance away from the scene and reaching into his front pocket for the key.

Neal leans up between the front seats, dangling the cuffs next to Peter's face. "Sorry," he says, grinning quick, "I couldn't resist." He pats the front of Peter's jacket and Peter feels the slight change in weight, recognizing that Neal had somehow gotten the key from him without noticing between his mock-arrest and getting into the car.

Peter groans a little, can't help it; he isn't sure if it's in response to Neal being Neal or being too impatient to exist, but the groan comes out anyway.

He drives forward, pulling up behind some midday traffic in the city and surreptitiously patting the inner breast pocket of his jacket to check for his wallet -- which isn't there. "Damn it, Neal," he says.

When he looks in the rear view mirror, Neal is lounging with his legs spread, impeccably tailored pants stretched tight along the muscles of his thighs (not that Peter notices this things -- well, he does, because it's his job, and aesthetically Neal is, of course, nice to look at, but --)

"Looking for this?" Neal asks, waving Peter's wallet in his direction.

"Give it," Peter says, extending a hand, and Neal places it obediently in his palm.

"That game is always fun," Neal says, stretching back more, smiling slow and satisfied before leaning up and crawling between the front seats to the passenger seat while Peter is still trying to shove his wallet back into place. Neal makes it look suave, despite the awkward movement of jamming his body over the arm rest and settling into place with his buckle as traffic starts to speed back up.

"Where'd you pick up a business card for a strip club, though?" Neal asks, after a pause.

Peter doesn't bother to answer -- he picked it up on the job and doesn't need to explain, and Neal shouldn't know what is in his wallet anyway (even if he probably knows to the day what is in all of Peter's bank accounts, even the few foreign ones he and Elizabeth have, and when all his appointments are for the next year.)

Peter looks over at Neal as they drive, catching movement out of the corner of his eye. Neal is massaging his wrists alternately, staring out the window at the buildings that go past with an uncharacteristic far-off look in his eyes. Upon closer inspection, Peter notices the red marks on Neal's wrists where the cuffs had bitten into his skin. Peter definitely knew he'd been more gentle than the circumstances called for (hated, somewhere deep down that he wouldn't admit to anyone except maybe El, having to put Neal back in cuffs after he'd – they'd – come so far) so the marks had to have been from Neal taking them off himself.

He goes to ask about them at another standstill in traffic, turning his head and almost getting the words out before pausing to watch Neal a little closer. He's got one of his wrists between the fingers of his opposite hand, and he's pressing against the bone hard enough to make more marks, fingers looped around like an imitation of cuffs.

Neal's eyes are almost closed too, like he's not aware of what he's doing, and when Peter follows the line of his arm down, Neal's shifting just slightly in his seat, half hard in his fitted slacks.

Peter swallows, dry, rolling his shoulders back. He creeps along through traffic until he finds his turn and doesn't think about Neal on the seat next to him until Neal seems to get over -- whatever that was -- and starts in on a case lead.

  
-

  
It's not an issue for a few weeks, both of them busy on cases and Peter occupied with more things than Neal's fascination with handcuffs or pain or whatever it was that Peter witnessed. Neal, Peter figures, is completely entitled to be as kinky as he'd like within the limits of his two mile radius, and Peter doesn't have to care. (Except for where he does care, a little, and El has called it out on him multiple times, usually in bed, usually when Peter can't even _think_ right with her on top of him -- but, Neal doesn't need to know that and it doesn't need to distract him.)

So Peter isn't thinking when they're working late in his dinning room, papers spread out across the table. Neal keeps moving, tapping his fingers or getting up to get a drink in the kitchen, get an apple, get a knife, get -- well, he's getting up too much.

El has long gone off to bed, and Peter wants nothing more than to join her, except they're close to something on their current case. He doesn't know exactly what, and Neal doesn't either, but they aren't going to get any closer if Neal doesn't stop getting up.

It's almost a joke, Peter feeling a bit punch-happy with the hour, but he gets up when Neal comes back from a trip to the bathroom (probably one that involved categorizing everything in the medicine cabinet, just for whatever scarily detailed mental file Neal keeps on Peter's life,) and goes to grab his pair of handcuffs.

He walks back into the dining room with them behind his back and stands behind Neal's chair, grabbing for Neal's wrist too quickly for Neal to react and cuffing it to the arm of his chair.

"What --" Neal says, "what was that for?" He looks amused, though, which wasn't the point, but Peter will take what he can get if Neal will just stay in one place.

(He'd probably take a lot if Neal would just stay in one place forever, and if the mark on the four-year date in his yearly planner didn't mean Neal was going to up and leave as soon as the day hit. That's different though, and it's late, and Peter really needs to sit down and not keep holding Neal's wrist against the wood of the chair and the metal of the cuffs, pressing in a little, too hard.)

"Peter," Neal says, differently, low in the silence of the house.

Peter steps away and rolls his shoulders back, quick, and slides back around to his side of the table. "There," he says, although the light tone he'd meant to go for in the first place is definitely off, "now you won't move so much. Maybe we'll actually get somewhere on this."

"We can pick up tomorrow," Neal says, frowning down at the credit card statements he'd been focused on before and fidgeting his arm enough that the metal of the handcuffs makes a dull sound on the wooden arm of the chair.

They keep working in silence, though. Peter finds himself studying Neal more than the papers in front of him: the way Neal has his shoulders tense and back straight, the way his wrist is pressed into the wood and metal uncomfortably, in a position that looks deliberate with the room the cuffs would usually allow.

He watches Neal's shifting start to slow and his eyes start to move less and less along the lines of expenditures in front of him. Like he's really being affected – the sort of thing he never shows in most other people's presence, a little break in his charisma. Peter feels bad, just a tiny bit, for not thinking through cuffing Neal to the chair.

“Alright,” Peter says, stacking the papers directly around him, “I think that's a night.” He reaches over the table for the papers scattered around Neal's side, frowning slightly when Neal doesn't make much effort to move or stop going over the last page in his hands.

He does set it down when he's done, meeting Peter's eyes – Peter feels caught, just a little; he'd been staring, – and shrugging. “Nothing there,” Neal says, adding the sheet to one of Peter's piles. He stretches back and yawns, just a little, pulling his arms up, the one cuffed to the chair not moving very far, the skin on his wrist just pressing tightly into the metal, digging in enough that Peter can see Neal's skin biting around it.

Peter goes around the table with the key, but pauses behind Neal's chair. “Neal,” he says, although he's not sure where he's going with it.

Neal takes the key from him with his free arm while Peter searches for a way to end his sentence, feeling at a rare loss. Neal uncuffs himself quietly and stands, right in Peter's space.

“I'm tired,” Neal says, quiet, and Peter looks down to watch Neal reach for his wrist to rub it, and gets his own hand there faster.

He doesn't know what he's doing, not really, but he presses gently into the red lines etched into the skin of Neal's wrist softly and in a circular fashion, the type of pressure El likes on her neck after stressful days at work.

Neal makes a soft noise and flexes his wrist under Peter's fingers, his eyes closing and shoulders relaxing down.

“Sorry for that,” Peter says, still rubbing in circles, trying to angle his body so it's not so close to Neal's, so he can't feel the warmth of Neal's body. “I didn't mean to --”

“It's okay,” Neal says, stepping back, eyes opening slowly but grinning quick. “Don't worry about it. Go up and tell El goodnight for me.”

Neal leaves on a turn, the front door closing with a barely audible click behind him, before Peter really moves from his standing position behind Neal's chair. He sinks down into it, wondering how his body seems to be operating a little ahead of his brain and wondering how he'd gotten nearly half hard in his work pants so quickly just from Neal, just from his wrist and his expression.

Peter, probably, needs a drink before bed.

  
-

  
It takes about a week for Peter to talk to Elizabeth about it, approaching it as seriously as he can and while he's got her pliant underneath him. She laughs at him, a little, teases him for using her approach to topics concerning Neal, but she's – surprisingly helpful.

It's not like they don't ever talk about Neal like this – they'd talked about him for the years Peter had been on his trail, and the dynamic had changed within the year that El had finally gotten to really meet Neal, to match a face to the things Peter would come home talking about. It's just that somehow they'd gotten into the habit of talking about him in bed, usually during sex, and Elizabeth is a lot more sneaky than Peter gives her credit for sometimes.

“It's not a – a cuff thing,” Elizabeth says, curled up against Peter's side, “it's a you thing. It's probably a cuff thing too, because of course Neal would be the type --”

“He would?” Peter asks, letting his fingers trail along her thigh. For all he knows about Neal, down to the pattern of his speech as Neal and at least three other sides of his persona, he'd never really stopped to consider (much) what sort of _things_ and _types_ he would have.

“Well, I can see it,” Elizabeth says. “But, anyway, it's mostly a you thing, I'd bet.”

“You think?” Peter asks, voice low and tired in the darkness of their room, eyes heavy. He can feel it in his bones – both the tiredness of the past week and of Neal, always some tiny part of his thoughts.

“I do,” Elizabeth says around a yawn. “Sleep now, though.”

And Peter does, falling asleep to a plan in his head and to El pressed into his side.

  
-

  
Peter cuffs him in the living room, home for an extended lunch. He gets Neal from behind, snapping the cuffs on and feeling slightly devious in a comical sort of way for doing it, almost sure he's not going about this – whatever it is – right.

“Peter,” Neal says, half a breath and almost part of a laugh. “What are you doing?”

Peter isn't a hundred percent sure on the answer, but he steps behind Neal all the way, chest pressed against his back, and hooks his chin over Neal's shoulder. “You have a – a cuff thing,” Peter says, “with your wrists.”

Neal's back stiffens just slightly and he hums, low in his throat, amused. “You noticed,” he says.

Peter steps back a little, one hand going down to clasp around where Neal's hands are cuffed behind his back. “Was I supposed to notice?” he asks.

Neal shrugs, and not being able to see his face is a little disorienting for Peter. “No,” Neal says, and then, “maybe.”

Peter lets go of Neal's cuffs and steps back another step. Neal turns around and closes the distance.

“What did El say about it?” he asks, his shoulders up at a at an odd angle from his arms being twisted behind his back. He's smiling, just a little, but his eyes are a little uncertain, obvious in a way they would only be to Peter.

Peter frowns a little, because Neal _would_ know he'd talked to Elizabeth about it. “She said it wasn't necessarily a handcuff thing,” he says, after a second. The afternoon is, so far, not going as he'd planned.

Neal nods and when he moves forward, his chest brushes against Peter's. Peter wants to back up just as much as he wants to move closer. “What did she think it was?” Neal asks, lower, the set of his mouth curious.

“She thought it was more of a me thing,” Peter says.

Neal nods again. “She's always so smart,” he says after a pause, pressing against Peter all the way, warmth and pressure down the entire length of Peter's body.

Peter nods at that, isn't sure what to say to Neal's admittance. “She is,” he agrees. Neal brushes his lips dry and light against Peter's chin.

“And I do have a little bit of a handcuff thing,” Neal says, pressed into Peter's neck, “but, on examination of my psyche, which I try to avoid, it's probably related to the 'you' thing, which I, generally speaking, also try to avoid.”

“You shouldn't,” Peter says, softer than he means to, but true. He runs a hand down Neal's back from his neck, working his palm down Neal's spine to find where his hands are cuffed together. Instead he finds empty space, and one of Neal's hands is on his waist, the other by the side of his head, dangling the handcuffs.

“I thought,” Neal says, “maybe this time without these.”

“Neal,” Peter says, almost wants to laugh, and leans back to check his pants pocket, where he had slipped the key before they left for lunch. _'This time'_ echoes in Peter's subconscious like it means something important.

Neal shrugs, eyes bright, and drops the cuffs onto the floor. He leans up on his heels a bit to drag his mouth up, pressing against Peter's dry and hot, and Peter doesn't even think to check for his wallet, too, before pulling Neal back flush against him and stepping him backwards towards the wall, kissing hard and slick into his mouth.


End file.
